That role will likely fall to Madison deputy town clerk Dorothy C. "Dolly" Bean, a short, shy middle-aged woman who has worked for the clerk's office for 17 years. Weddings are nothing new in Madison--the town issued 52 marriage licenses so far this year--but Bean and the clerk's office had advance warning that seven same-sex couples were planning to ask for licenses. GLAD lawyers called ahead to let Madison's town attorney, Judith Ravel, know the couples were coming. The clerk's office was then stocked with copies of the legal opinion Blumenthal gave in May that said Connecticut law does not allow for same-sex marriage.

The A.B.C. students were not the only ones to profit from the program. Judith Ravel, a lawyer, and her husband, a doctor now deceased, were one of the original host families. As hosts, they took in one young woman for a weekend a month. ''It wasn't just that we wanted to do something to help the girls who came,'' Ms. Ravel said. ''It was perceived by those of us who started it as a positive value to our children.''